Description

A relative of Abd al-Rahman al-Shaludi, who killed two
Israelis with his car last month, displays his portrait inside his
family home after it was razed by Israeli authorities in East
Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood on Nov. 19, 2014.
(AFP/Ahmad Gharabli)

Home of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, the Jerusalem motorist from the October 22, 2014 light rail attack in Jerusalem, demolished by Israeli authorities early Wednesday morning, in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem (Photo: Allison Deger)

Blown out windows of the apartment of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi. (Photo: Allison Deger)

Enas al-Shaludi in her living room, hours after Israeli authorities demolish her son’s home and ransack hers. (Photo: Allison Deger)

Abdel Karim al-Shaloui stands in the former salon of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi’s apartment, hours after Israeli authorities demolish it by explosion. (Photo: Allison Deger)

Apartment of Enas al-Shaludi, mother of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi. (3 Photos: Allison Deger)
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by IMEMC & Agencies

Israeli soldiers detonated, on Wednesday at dawn, the home of Abdul-Rahman Shalloudi in Silwan town, south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel claims Shalloudi, who was shot dead on October 23, deliberately rammed his car into Israeli waiting for the light rail.

An Israeli infant was killed in the incident, and seven other Israelis were wounded; while many reports indicated he might have lost control of his vehicle due to high speed and illness.

Shalloudi’s mother, Enas, told the Palestinian News & Info Agency WAFA that the soldiers invaded their home an hour after midnight, forced all families in the residential building out on their homes, and detonated the fourth floor where the Shalloudi family lived.

WAFA said five other families, not related to Shalloudi, live in the building; the families, including children and elderly, were all forced into the protest tent in the al-Bustan neighborhood, while the army detonated the fourth floor.

Enas added that the explosion caused damage to other apartments in the building, while the debris also damaged a number of cars, parked on the street near the building.

The soldiers earlier searched and ransacked all apartments in the building, causing excessive property damage.
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Mother of demolished Silwan home: 'Violence begets violence'
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- The mother of Abd al-Rahman al-Shaludi, who killed two Israelis after driving into civilians in Jerusalem last month, spoke out on Wednesday following the demolition of her home by Israeli forces.

"The Israeli occupation wants to break up our family and displace us. They think that by demolishing the houses of martyrs they will deter the people of Jerusalem and Palestine, but violence begets violence," she told Ma'an.

"I don't know what to do and where we will live in the coming days," she said, while sitting on a couch in an apartment next to her demolished home.

The family has temporarily moved to her husband's brother's home.

"We can't afford to rent a house in the city especially because my son and daughter are university students," she said.

"The occupation tried to take revenge on the martyr's family and his neighbors. They forced us out in the open from 1-5 a.m. and locked us up inside a tent in the al-Bustan neighborhood and we were not allowed to move. They confiscated our IDs and our mobile phones. Children and the elderly members of the family were not allowed to go to use the bathrooms."

Other apartments in the building were damaged when they demolished their home, she said, adding that other members of the al-Shaludi family who live in the five-story building will have to move due the the damage caused by explosives.

One of the family members, Tamir al-Shaludi, said Israeli forces stole over 80,000 shekels ($20,800) from one of the fifth floor apartments during the demolition.

The demolition, which took place overnight, is one of at least six orders issued by the Israeli government to destroy the homes of the families' of Palestinians who attacked Israelis.

On Sunday, Israeli rights group B'Tselem said that punitive house demolitions are "fundamentally wrong" and contravene "basic moral standards by punishing people for the misdeeds of others."
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by Allison Deger on November 20, 2014 for Mondoweiss

Israeli police ransacked seven apartments and urinated inside one while demolishing the Silwan apartment of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, 21, the Palestinian motorist from East Jerusalem who killed a three-month old Israeli-American Chaya Zissel and one Ecuadoran tourist in a light rail attack in Jerusalem on October 22, 2014.

“They urinated on the mattresses in my brother’s apartment,” says Enas al-Shaludi, 43, the mother of the deceased driver. “You can see the urine on the mattresses.” In addition to the demolition, which the family expected after receiving a demolition order last Friday, all of the other apartments in the four-story residential building were raided. The residents were evacuated overnight to a flimsy plastic tarp tent across the street.

Just before midnight on Tuesday evening scores of Israeli border police arrived outside of Enas al-Shaludi’s house. Her apartment is on the floor below where her son and three grandchildren lived. “At one o’clock in the morning they [border police] came and took all of the families and all of the people in this building and the next building. They moved us out to the tent, maybe 50 or more people, there,” she explains. The neighbors, all from the al-Shaludi family waited overnight while police affixed incendiary devices to the ceilings of the destroyed apartment.

Enas al-Shaludi waited outside in the cold from 1:00 am to 5:00 am as border police conducted searches throughout the building. When the family returned they found shards of glass everywhere. Children’s bedroom furniture was overturned and broken, toys and clothes littered broken wardrobes. In many of the rooms, not even a centimeter of floor was visible because of the piles of dumped personal items. The building resembled that of Amer Abu Aisha and Marwan Qawasmeh, the two accused abductors and killers of three Israeli settlers last June from a hitchhiking spot in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem. In that case, the Israeli army demolished a unit in each of the buildings with explosives, and trashed all of the other apartments with hammers.

“When they demolished, with the bomb, I felt like I can’t stand on my legs. Until now I can’t stand,” sys Enas al-Shaludi seated from a sofa in what was once her living room. A hutch in her hallway is cracked. Her bedroom is unusable. She is planning to spend the night with other relatives, once the paralysis of shock faded and she was able to walk again.

“The other houses, you can see inside all of the bathrooms, everything. They broke many doors, glass and windows throughout the building,” says Abdel Karim al-Shaludi, 62, a relative of the family and engineer who came his Shuafat home to view the aftermath shortly after sunrise. Droves of relatives and neighbors gathered after daybreak to help assess the damage. Peering at concrete rubble that lined the floor of al-Shaludi’s one-time home, Karim al-Shaludi laments, “I feel that this situation will push the people.” For him, if his nephew’s home is demolished than so too should the house of the confessed Jewish-Israeli killer of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year old youth from Jerusalem who was kidnapped and then burned to death last June.

Since al-Shaludi’s October 22, 2014 attack in Jerusalem, the family home has been a site of clashes with police and is now the first case of Israel’s return to a regular use of punitive home demolitions for Palestinians thought to have committed nationalistic crimes against Israeli citizens. Netanyahu announced on Sunday the policy would return in earnest after the military said they would abandon the practice in 2005.

On the street just below al-Shaludi’s flat, mounds of concrete crushed a parked car. The explosion shot the cement bindings out to the street.

Back up in the destroyed al-Shaludi apartment, Fadi, a 13-year-old cousin of the deceased, regains his footing inside the blown out home. It’s the third demolished house he has seen belonging to a member of his family. When asked how many demolished homes he’s visited in his East Jerusalem neighborhood, he thinks for a moment, and then settles on “a lot. Maybe eight.”